How Hurricane Maria put Puerto Rico's Doctors' Center Hospital to the test

When we realized that Manati, Puerto Rico-based Doctors' Center Hospital was one of the top five small hospitals in the 2017 Best Hospital IT Departments, we weren't sure whether they'd have much time to talk to us with the ongoing crisis in the wake of Hurricane Maria still gripping the island.
Thankfully, Chief Information Officer Pedro Rios-Mercado was able to find some time to speak with us over a spotty phone line, despite the fact that the hospital was "still fighting with our electricity" five full weeks after the storm had made landfall on Sept. 20.
Doctors' Center Hospital has four locations across the island, but Manati is its main headquarters. "Every hospital in Puerto Rico was hit," Rios-Mercado said.
When we spoke on Oct. 25, Manati had been able to run its Meditech EHR with help from a generator, but the other hospitals had been forced to return to paper records for weeks since the hurricane.